12 Bliss Street (4 page)

“That’s very funny,” Audrey said, looking at herself in the mirror.

“But guess what I said.”

“Well, but he had a
towel
over his head.”

“Why can’t I just say yes? Francis was a really nice guy! He was funny! He was premed!”

“I’m sure he’ll end up forty years old and channel-flipping like everyone else,” Audrey told her.

“My point is that there is something seriously wrong with me.”

“You’re having a bad day,” Audrey said. “Have you spoken to Lester today? Why don’t you call her? Declan is probably home.”

“That’s a good idea. You know, I was thinking yesterday that maybe I should give Lester a girlie middle name. To avoid all the gender confusion.”

“What, like Lester Anna?”

“Or Lester Louisa.”

“Or Lester Pearl.”

Nicola laughed. “Lester Pearl,” she repeated, and reapplied the paper towel to her eyelids. “I like that,” she said.

*   *   *

She called Lester
when she got back to her desk; Declan, who was in fact home, switched to speaker phone so Nicola could hear Lester’s paws click over the hardwood floors. Then Louise brought back some chocolate cookies and after two of those Nicola did feel better.

What it was, she decided, was an episode day. This was a technique she had learned from Scooter; once when he was watching some science fiction show and the characters were even more than normally stupid he said, Don’t they realize this is one of those episode days? And it was true, Nicola thought—there are days that are simply uncontrollably unavoidably bad and you better just expect more of the same and not try to fight it.

That was today.

She looked at her watch; her cardio-kickboxing class was at six. Then it was the weekend and she would relax, go to a movie, or do something fun. What? In any case she would
not
look at the rentals in the classifieds, not this weekend. And she would not drive up and down streets looking for for-rent signs in windows. Well, maybe just the street along the beach, the Great Highway, a street named in the old Scots tradition of long high narrow roads and not in the modern tradition of on-ramps. But, on second thought, apartments along there would be so expensive. No, she would not drive down any streets. Maybe she would just peek at the classifieds.

“Do you want to go out with Declan and me tonight?” Audrey asked her.

“I have my kickboxing class,” Nicola said.

“Well, call us later if you want.”

Her class was held at a Karate Academy down the street and Nicola considered not going. The truth was she didn’t like jumping, which almost all sports, she found, required. Also exercise clothes depressed her. Also she disliked locker rooms, all that gray expanse of gray with identical locks on the lockers, which was ludicrous when you thought about it because who would ever want whatever was inside? The chocolate cookies were definitely wearing off. At the gym Nicola changed her clothes, then took her place in the line of women, most of whom had clenched jaws and were already kicking the air and punching.

“And jab! Jab! Jab!” her instructor Alicia shouted. “Get that leg up, Nicola!”

One hour, she told herself, then pizza with anchovies and a cornmeal crust. She fell down twice during the matches trying to kick her opponent, an apologetic lesbian who never even made contact. After the second fall Alicia told Nicola she wasn’t trying. Wasn’t trying! She had been the kickball champion of her third grade, but everything had fallen apart since then. Alicia, meanwhile, was slim with the whitest teeth Nicola had ever seen.

“Nicola, raise your leg!”

“Nicola, your leg!”

“Nicola, leg!”

I’m getting worse with each class, Nicola thought. Worse. How could that be? A gritty sweat was trickling down her temples and her arms felt only loosely connected to her body, as if stuck on with paper fasteners.

Afterwards Nicola showered then tried to do something with her hair, which looked even worse than before. It was dark when she finally left. The sidewalk was crowded with people walking their dogs or reading posted restaurant menus and, down the street, some kids were selling chocolate or something for their school. Nicola walked in their direction, heading for the gourmet pizza place on the corner. Although she tried to remind herself it was just an episode day, she couldn’t help feeling disheartened.

She was hungry and tired and her arm felt bruised where she had fallen on it. The sidewalk was sloppy with worms of wet paper and bird poop, and Nicola caught herself going over the bad points of the day from the top. If I see Chorizo on Monday, she told herself, and if he asks me out again, I’ll say yes. Or maybe I’ll ask
him
out. Or maybe I’ll ask if I can share his table, and then I’ll eat lunch with him and then ask him out.

Probably she would think up various responses for various circumstances over the entire weekend, and this sort of depressed her. Yes, she practiced. Yes, yes. Yes. She never noticed before how much it sounded like sex.

“Help our school, buy a candy bar?” the high school girl asked as Nicola approached. She was tall with inky black hair and bangs that seemed to have been cut with pinking shears. Her long arms held the chocolate protectively against her chest—or was she just cold? Next to her a boy in combat pants was leaning against the low brick wall that separated the sidewalk from a small parking lot. They were young, maybe sixteen. Nicola didn’t catch the name of their school.

“No thanks,” she said. Then she stopped. What had she just been telling herself? “Wait. Actually, why not.”

“Chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, or something with nougat?” the girl asked.

“What’s the difference between chocolate and milk chocolate or dark chocolate?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl. She wore black jeans and a big puffy black coat and she pursed her lips into an uncertain smile.

“I’ll take the milk chocolate,” Nicola told her.

“A bunch of these got stolen,” the girl said, “from some seventh graders. Can you believe that? Stealing candy from kids?”

“From babies,” Nicola said, looking in her wallet. “Like the saying.”

“Hunh?”

“Stealing candy from babies.”

“I know, I can’t believe it,” the girl said. “Do you believe in karma?”

“I only have a twenty,” Nicola said.

The girl and the boy exchanged a look.

“You go,” the girl said.

The boy pulled himself away from the wall, and Nicola noticed some duct tape stuck on his jeans. Was this what they used as patches these days? “We keep the money in my mom’s minivan,” he explained. “Over here.”

He headed toward a caramel-colored minivan in the corner and Nicola followed him. The lot was just a few feet from the street but it was quiet here and dark and felt weirdly empty after the sidewalk scene and Nicola thought under the right circumstances this would seem creepy.

“Did you know that people who eat chocolate live longer?” the boy asked her. He had a raspy voice, maybe a shade too high, and his hair was buzzed short, army-style. “Studies show,” he said.

He took Nicola’s twenty, then went around to the other side of the van and pulled open the door. For a second he disappeared. When he came back his hand was closed, but when he opened it there was no money inside. Instead he suddenly grabbed her wrist.

“What?” Nicola said, as if he had said something she hadn’t quite heard.

“Come here,” he said, and his expression tightened.

All at once she understood and a cold flush went through her. He pulled her toward him and put something—the duct tape—on her mouth with one hard push so that it wrinkled and didn’t adhere very well. Instinctively she pulled at it with her free hand and thought: The girl will help. Then she remembered the girl was with him.

“Hey,” the boy said as she tugged at the tape, and he pushed her hand from her face. “Dave!” he called.

The girl came up from behind Nicola and took her other hand.

“Quickly,” she said.

They were standing in the dark shadows of cars. The boy pulled off another strip of duct tape from his jeans and Nicola felt her arms being pulled behind her from two directions, the boy’s and the girl’s, and she realized they were trying to get her hands behind her so they could tape them up. She struggled and then let her legs collapse so she was kneeling on the parking lot, her head bowed in front of her execution style. Mainly she was just trying to keep her left arm—the arm the girl called Dave was holding—in her lap or in front of her chest so they could not tape her up, and she found herself staring hard at the blacktop: a dark, almost glittering surface.

“Stop!” the boy said in his raspy voice.

Why was no one coming into the parking lot?

“Come on, Dave, you have to be quick,” the girl said to him.

Wait, Nicola thought, which one is named Dave? And as if they sensed her distraction, they both pulled on her arms hard at the same time and got them behind her, and the boy quickly taped her two wrists together. Nicola’s mouth went dry and she curled to the ground feeling altogether submissive without the use of her hands. Her mind seemed to have shrunk to a pinpoint which could understand almost nothing of what was happening.

The boy and the girl pulled her into the back row of the minivan, then the girl, who may or may not be the one called Dave, wound some dark cloth around her eyes. She said, “You know, you won’t be hurt.”

Her arms hurt, her face hurt, and she had skinned at least one knee falling down on the blacktop. The girl tightened Nicola’s seat belt, then climbed into the front seat.

She said, “You did it.”

“Yeah,” said the boy. “Do you have the candy?”

“How did you do it? I don’t think I coulda.”

“Visualization. The whole time we were at it I saw her taped up in the back.”

And here I am, Nicola thought. Although she wanted to believe the girl when she said she wouldn’t be hurt, her mouth was still dry and her heart was still racing. From the front seat she heard the click of seat belts connecting. Then the boy started the engine, and the doors locked in unison.

Four

At the first
stoplight the van turned left, then left again, heading downtown. Overhead wires crisscrossed like shattered glass and behind them the ocean glittered darkly, blowing off foam. It was cold in the van. The boy, who was driving, put his palm to the instrument panel, then adjusted the airflow through the vents. He was smaller than the girl and had a thin, strained face. The girl stared straight ahead with the candy in her lap.

“We should do a circle when we get there,” she said.

The boy didn’t answer. The van swerved a little and Nicola righted herself awkwardly, her hands taped behind her. What did that mean, a circle? Were they witches or warlocks or what do you call them, wicca?

Light came up from beneath her blindfold, and when she looked down Nicola could see a pinkish blur which was the tip of her nose. She didn’t think witches called themselves Dave. Or was this a new gang thing, the Dave gang? Nicola almost laughed at that and realized she was still in shock.

She tested the strength of the duct tape on her hands and tried to think if she’d seen any weapons, any bulges that might have been weapons. When she first saw the boy, didn’t he have his hand in his pocket? Like he was holding onto something there?

Boy Dave and Girl Dave. Dave and Davette. Maybe they’re trying to get
into
a gang. Maybe this is some kind of Dave wicca gang
initiation
thing.

It was quiet in the van. Nicola figured they were on Portola Street now, winding their way past Twin Peaks. For a while she was able to mentally follow their progress. At the top of the hill Portola became Market Street and the van lurched down, beginning its descent. A picture of the area formed in her mind as if she were touch typing: the cars and lit cafés, the people walking slowly as if they were blind. For a moment she felt as if she was floating helplessly among them.

No one knew she was here.

After a while Davette opened the box of candy bars and broke off a square for Dave, then took one for herself. The smell of nougat wafted back. Still no one spoke. Where were they taking her? Their silence was beginning to feel menacing.

At last they turned off Market Street and into a small alley. As the van slowed to a stop Nicola’s heart began to beat fast again.

Davette swallowed. “Do the wallet first,” she said.

They were going through her purse. Dave counted out the bills then he examined Nicola’s plastic cards: VISA, VISA Gold, YMCA ID and towel card. Her library card. Her driver’s license which expired last birthday and the renewal sticker behind it. Everything that listed who she was: Nicola Elizabeth Swain, thirty-one years old, divorced, no children, residence 3584A Santiago Street. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, allergic to codeine and hazelnuts. Five foot five, black hair, green eyes, good skin.

How much did they want to know? How much was documented?

“Here’s the ATM card,” Davette was saying. “Under ‘A.’”

“What kind of person keeps their plastic ordered alphabetically?”

“Look at all this. Pills in the pill case. Sunglasses in the sunglasses case. Pens in the pen holders. And all the pens have their original caps. It’s so, like, yin.”

They talked as if she wasn’t there. That annoyed her. Her stomach clenched with hunger and Nicola remembered again that she hadn’t had dinner.

“Life according to plan,” Dave said, zipping up his jacket.

He jumped out of the van. As he slid open the back door a rush of foggy cold air blew in at her.

“I’m going to take you out on the street and unblindfold you,” he told her. “Don’t do anything since I have a knife.”

On the street he ripped the tape off her hands in a way that was really painful and Nicola found herself again the stereotype: rubbing her freed wrists. When he took off her blindfold she saw they were in an alley behind a small fenced lot. Several rent-a-Dumpsters stood between here and the next busy street—Seventh?—and there were other signs of recent construction.